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Saturday night I finally made it to the Steel City Derby Demons championship match to watch The Bitch Doctors (best name ever) take on The Wrecking Dolls.

I gotta tell you, I had no idea what to expect. Was it going to be lame? Weird? WWE on skates?

My first thought upon entering Bladerunners? Whoa! Gothy!

Lots of goth people like the roller derby and there were some really strange characters, namely this guy:

I saw these people and said, “Oh, Shit. The Dread Lord Zober sent minions.”

It turned out that they were advertising the upcoming ScareHouse. Whew. PittGirl survives the Dread Lord another day.

The rest of the crowd, and it was a frickin’ large crowd, was a huge, awesome, eclectic mix of people. Rockers, gothers, rich-looking classy people, poor-looking trailer people (not that there’s anything wrong with that), moms, dads, kids, single guys, single girls, married couples. It was the strangest mix of people I’ve ever seen outside of the City County Building.

My second thought, as I sat down and watched the girls warming up by skating circles around the track and practicing their moves: I am in love.

You guys and you girls? This girl can skate. I could not take my eyes off of her. She was so fluid and so fast and so strong and so HOT. I turned to my friend and said, “That girl is hot.” But he was in love with this Bitch Doctor:

Swear to God. Cannot see her face because it is painted like a skull and he was like, “Wow. HAWT!” She was also a badass skater. I realize it is blurry, but she was that damn fast.

While I went into the match thinking I wanted The Bitch Doctors to win, I quickly switched sides to cheer on The Wrecking Dolls because hell, I might self-unite to ‘Snot Rocket Science. If you read her MySpace or her Facebook, you quickly realize she’s like Julie Gong on skates. You can’t go wrong with that, boys.

These are photos from her Facebook, which is public, because she’s a rock star.

Enough girl crush. On to the derby bout. Two thirty-minute halves.

I realized as the bout began that I should have read up on some of the rules of the game because I had no idea how the scoring worked or even what the object of the game was. I’m watching them skate, there’s a pack of girls, there’s pushing, shoving, screaming, falling, and suddenly a girl breaks free from the pack, goes flying around the ring twice and BAM! There’s 14 points on the board for The Bitch Doctors.

Me: “Wait. Who got two touchdowns?”

Exactly.

I loved it. Every minute of it. It is as exciting as football, but with more bitch-slapping and elbowing. And not as gay. There are wide-receiver equivalent skaters whose job it seems to be to score the points. There are linebacker type skaters who use their body mass to block opposing skaters. There are coaches and refs and mayhem. LOTS OF MAYHEM!

If it wouldn’t have drawn attention to myself, I would have thrown my body against the glass while pounding ferociously on it while screaming, “Choke that bitch! Choke her good!”

Fonda Bruises has a nice writeup on the match. Including pictures of the trophy. You have to see the trophy.

You must go check out a bout. You must see what I mean about ‘Snot Rocket Science. She is incredible. Go. Their interleague team takes on Harrisburg on November 22. Experience something different. Become a fan. See her for yourself, and all the girls for that matter. And while you’re there, propose marriage to her. She might kick your teeth in with four orange wheels, but it will be worth it.

Every single one of the roller derby girls are the next Awesome Burghers. Their crowns are in the mail and by “crowns” I mean “the adoration of your newest fan.”

If you go back to one of the original posts on the Derby you will see I professed my love for Snot Rocket. So if there is a line, which I’m sure there is, you are BEHIND me. Though since you are PittGirl, I might let you get close enough to stare in naked admiration for hours on end.

I took my daughter to her first bout and she was screaming her little head off, declaring near the end that she wants to be a Derby girl. I told her what I told you, get in line sister, I’m in front.

I remember watching matches on TV waaaaay back in the day, when the Bay Area Bombers were on every Saturday, against the Washington Gener … um, some other team, and being baffled. Roller Derby is the athletic version of the card game TAGWAR*, which always made it amusing at the end of the telecast that the announcer would say, “For your free copy of Roller Derby rules, write …”

PittGirl, I am so glad you finally made it out to a bout. I had a feeling you were going to be there!

Bucdaddy, I was right along with you watching derby on TV back then, that is when the dream started. It took me many, many years to see that dream come true. We DO have rules, strict ones. Trust me, I’ve sat in the penalty box many times for breaking them!

I also work at Scarehouse, which was just named #5 on the list of top haunts in the US. Opening night is this Friday, the Travel Channel will be there filming and if you wear any SCDD merchandise, you get $4 off and you may be on TV!

Fonda, I’m not sure I meant rules like “Don’t kill anyone if you can help it,” more like what PittGirl noted: Suddenly BAM there’s 14 points for no real obvious reason. To go back to the old BABs, it probably didn’t escape your attention that no matter how far behind they were, with about two seconds to play there’d be this enormous pigpile and one of the Bombers would go leaping over the pile and that was always worth exactly however many points they needed to win (wink wink).

I WILL grant you, as one who tried to roller skate once and quit forever because I was NOT so fonda bruises, that it certainly takes some athletic skill to do what you do, which is admirable. It also probably gives you all terrific leg and thigh muscles and amazing glutes, which is even more admirable. ;-)

Pittgirl, thank you so much for attending and writing about our championship game! I hope you are able to come to one of our interleague games to see us make Pittsburgh proud in the black and gold.

The Steel City Derby Demons, and most other contemporary derby leagues, play by the rules defined by the Womens Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). We don’t allow fighting, real or staged, and our games are not fixed.